June 2008 - Posts

• Installation Hack Jobs

  As you know, I am a HUGE VW/Audi fan. Several of the cars I have owned include the Audi 4000 and Coupe GT. In both cars, right behind the rear seat was the gas tank. And it wasn't uncommon to hear complaints from owners of the cars telling horror stories of installed drilling into their gas tanks on a fairly regular basis. While wandering though my photo collection the other day, I ran across this picture of an installed who drilled through an Air Bag Sensor and kept going. Do you have any hack job pictures you wanna share? Posted Jun 30 2008, 04:24 PM by BenVollmer with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Car Audio

• Bob Johann - Judge

  Name: Bob Johann Bio: Born July 18, 1968. Yes, I turn 40 this summer. *gasp* I grew up in Eureka, IL in a fairly musical family. I played percussion through school, with a love for marching (snare line) and drum corps, but also played piano and guitar when I was younger. During my senior year, our school pep band won the annual contest as the best small school pep band in the state so we got to play at the state boys basketball tournament semi-final, consolation and championship games held at the University of Illinois. I graduated from Illinois Wesleyan University in 1990 with a degree in Accounting, but also participated in the pep band for football and basketball games. I was employed by the CNA Insurance Companies in Chicago for 8 years before joining Caterpillar back home in central Illinois for the past 10 years. My time in Chicago included a brief stint on the snare line with the Chicago Vanguard senior drum corps How long have you been involved with Audio? I have always enjoyed having audio electronics around, including mounting an am/fm radio on my bicycle handlebar to listen to while doing my paper route or riding around the neighborhood with friends. I installed my own system in my first car after having it for less than a week. It was a “Super Sale” special, with an Alphine (yes, A-L-P-H-I-N-E) “auto-stop” cassette deck, a Pyramid 60 watt under-dash power booster, and 6x9 4-way generic speakers for the rear deck. I think it cost me less than $80 for everything in 1984. I soon realized that having all the sound coming from behind me was not enough, so I added a set of Pioneer’s “tune-up” speakers (self-contained 2.5” mid/tweet with built in variable attenuation knob) up front. Gotta love it. After graduating from HS in 1986, I went to the local audio store and upgraded to a Kenwood cassette deck and 6x9’s, along with a Coustic equalizer. I had to keep the Pioneer’s up front because the only factory location in my car was a single opening in the center of the dash. In 1988, as I was investigating my next upgrade, the local shop was hosting something called “Car Audio Nationals II” in their parking lot. The salesman suggested I come out that Saturday and check it out. I did, and the rest is history. While I didn’t have anything to compete with, I was hooked on the concept that married 3 of my favorite things together: good music, shiny cars, and tinkering with electronics. Between 1988 and 1994 I attended a couple local shows each year as a spectator to meet the competitors, listen to their cars, and get ideas. I subscribed to every car audio magazine I could get my hands on and read a couple books on sound, speakers, and enclosure design just to learn. Unfortunately, as a college student/graduate from a private school, I had no extra income to spend on car stereo equipment. Did you ever compete? If so, in what organization and What / When was your first completion? Yes, I competed a lot over the years. My first competition was in June of 1994. It was an IASCA sanctioned event at American TV in Madison, WI. I entered the contest in the class I wanted to be in (Novice 101-250 watts) and when the judge did the verification for my car, he bumped me up to 251-500 by mistake despite my protests and pointing out he was wrong. Never the less, I won the class they moved me to but IASCA re-classified me correctly to the 101-250 class when they got the results. I got trophy points for the win since I had a higher score than the cars that were judged in 101-250, which upset the actual winner of that class since we had different judges. I continued to compete with good local and regional success from 1994-1997 in the low-power Novice and Amateur classes, but could not quite crack the elite on a national level despite having SQ scores as good as or better than them. The install scores were where I was getting beat at the big national shows. I then became a judge at local Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Indiana IASCA events in 1998, and was “discovered” as a sound quality judge doing the local Audiosports-produced events. The first “big” event I was asked to judge was FUSE, the Mobile Electronics Show in Atlantic City, NJ. From there, my name went on the list of judges for most of the major regional and national events in 1999, 2000, and early 2001, including the Southeastern Invitational in Perry, GA, Spring Break Nationals, the Midwest Showdown, the 2000 IASCA Finals (work kept me from the 1999 Finals), and the 2001 Wild West Shootout. In June 2001 I began competing again in the newly developed Pro-Street 1-600 watt class, going undefeated in IASCA competition and winning the class at Finals. The undefeated streak continued at IASCA and MECA events through most of 2002, which included winning Championships in the newly-formed SLAP organization and in MECA’s highest class: Master. The lone defeat was a second place finish at IASCA Finals behind friend and teammate Natan Budiono. For 2002 and 2003 I was the Midwest event coordinator for SLAP and also coordinated an IASCA event in the area. A second IASCA Championship was won in 2003 in StreetX 1-600, followed by a second SLAP Championship in 2005. MECA named me to their inaugural Competitor Hall of Fame class in 2005. Not to be left out, I was also a member of USACi for one year and entered one of their local events in 2003. I retired from active participation at events following the 2005 season. The SVT Contour I used in competition is no longer my daily driver as it had been. It is now seeing time on I retired from active participation at events following the 2005 season. The SVT Contour I used in competition is no longer my daily driver as it had been. It is now seeing time on road courses in HPDE’s (high performance driving events) as well as local cruise ins and car shows. The system is still in the car the same as it has been since 2001, except I pulled the two 12” subs and their enclosure out of the trunk. They were never on anyway since their sole purpose in life was to burp for 3 seconds at shows. The sq subs are mounted up front. What CD's are in your CD players right now? To be honest, none. I listen to Sirius about 99% of the time in the vehicle, listening to NASCAR radio most of the time, but switching to the Big 80’s, Sirius Super Shuffle, Hair Nation, and Radio Margaritaville from time to time (unless my wife sets the channel to Country when she is with me). When I demo the Contour, the discs I use lately include the Sound Quality Summit disc put together by Scott Buwalda, Mark Eldridge’s 4Runner demo CD #1, and a Hugh Masakela album titled “Hope” (track 12 is awesome). If you were on a island with one Artist's music, who would that artist be? I am not sure. My taste in music is so varied, I am not sure that I could settle on just one. What is your favorite genre of music? I like Classical, Jazz, big band, 80’s/90’s pop and dance stuff, some techno, some African and Latin… Anything that is not rap or heavy metal basically. Country used to also be on the dislike list, but my wife has exposed it to me enough that it is now at least tolerable. What is the ONE car you wish you could listen to? Probably the Speakerworks Buick Gran National. What is one of the best live music shows you have seen? Why? The best live musical events are DCI shows. DCI is Drum Corps International, and the shows that have several of the top-tier groups are incredible. The musicianship, execution, and pageantry are second to none. There is also a Tony award-winning theatrical production called “Blast!” that takes the drum corps philosophy and approach and puts it in a theater setting. I saw it twice. J Posted Jun 29 2008, 10:36 PM by BenVollmer with no comments Filed under: Judges, Bob Johann

• Alpine's Cool '37 Coupe

  Moe from IASCA sent me some pictures of a 1937 Ford Coupe that he and the crew over at SoundCrafters just finished.  I thought some people picked difficult vehicles, but the space available in this coupe with a full roll cage would make me cringe. Here are some pictures while we work on a full write up with installation pictures a little later. A HUGE Shout Out to Moe and Rob Casto who did the install on this monster. This coupe won a  2007 Hot Wheels Design Award for car with Attitude at last SEMA Show in Las Vegas. horsepower is estimated in the over-the-top 2300 horsepower range. The car, representing Weld Racing, was located in the South Hall at the Inside America Racing Booth. Running a full Alpine electronics setup, this thing has GOT to be loud to overcome engine noise. I wonder how we would do Alternator noise checking with that big of blower. :-) More finished pictures and a complete write up next time we hit Orlando! Posted Jun 26 2008, 01:27 PM by BenVollmer with 1 comment(s) Filed under: CAN, Car Audio, IASCA, SoundCrafters

• Deep South Nationals - CAN Results

  It was awesome to go out to Deep South Nationals. It was cool being able to judge with everybody. It was truly a highlight to be able to listen to that many cars all weekend. Here is Andy Jones, Steve Head, John Marsh and Mark Eldridge   (Left to Right) While I was sweating profusely, Sean from SoundDomain was able to get some awesome shots of cars both inside and outside related to Sound Quality.  You can check out SoundDomain's coverages here. http://blog.sounddomain.com/gadget/2008/06/deep-south-na-1.html While CAN was there, a huge draw was the Deep South Nationals with it's cash prize. Rick was nice enough to allow me to test CAN's judging Software out a bit early on his event. As a result, all of the scores are now available online. You can look at the file in Excel 2003 or 2007, but 2007 is required to manipulate it. If you don't have Excel installed on your machine, you can use the FREE Excel Viewer located here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=1cd6acf9-ce06-4e1c-8dcf-f33f669dbc3a&DisplayLang=en You can download all of the scores here. http://cid-a254a0c01745864c.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/DSN%20Scores/DSN%20-%20Final%20w%20Edits.xlsx For CAN, we tried different ways to make the scores meet. The problem is that USACi uses a different scoresheet for their classes. Which makes cross class comparisons hard. So we did it based upon the number of points achieved. So take the number of total points and divide by the number of points achieved to get a percentage to make it work. Competitor Name Class SQ Points Eligible Percentage Placement Mark Eldridge Two Seat 193.5 195 99.23   1st Steve Head Two Seat 172 195 88.21  2nd Andy Jones Two Seat 171 195 87.69    3rd Jan Bennett Two Seat 170.5 195 87.44    4th Jan Bennett Two Seat 164.5 195 84.36    5th Lee Chavers One Seat 153 195 78.46    3rd Kirk Proffitt One Seat 160 195 82.05   2nd Lee Chavers One Seat 96 125 76.80    4th Andy Jones One Seat 111 125 88.80    1st See you guys @ Elite Summer Nationals! Posted Jun 26 2008, 11:48 AM by BenVollmer with 1 comment(s) Filed under: CAN, Deep South Nationals, Andy Jones, Lee Chavers, Steve Head, Jan Bennett, Kirk Proffit, Mark Eldridge

• Weekend Plans - Deep South Nationals

  What are your plans for this weekend? I will be heading Friday morning over to a show I am super excited to go to this year. Rick Sellers has a put together a killer set of judges for this event including some current and past world champions. It is an exciting group of people to be included with. From a competitor perspective, I hear that Mark Eldridge will be bringing out Project One for it's competition debut.  Sound Sensations is also bringing out their 1999 Mercedes CLK 430 that just won the Pioneer Build Off. It will be available in the Pioneer Booth. Rick is also doing something cool. He is bringing out several high quality Sound Quality cars including his Intrepid, Markey Dietrich's Ford Probe and others for folks to listen to. In addition to the KILLER prize money that has been assembled thanks to some very generous sponsors, including Realm Car Audio, JL Audio, Hybrid Audio, Polk Audio and more, Car Audio Nationals will be there with prize money for the best sounding car as well! It will be a killer show. You can find more information on the show including directions and past pictures at http://www.scrapinthecoast.com. Looking forward to seeing you this weekend!! Posted Jun 19 2008, 07:23 AM by BenVollmer with no comments Filed under: CAN, Deep South Nationals

• Micah Sheveloff - Judge

  Name: Micah Sheveloff Bio: Founder of The Voodoo Jets...President of WIRC Media, a PR amd marketing firm for consumer electronics companies How long have you been involved with Audio? As a musician and music fan, I listened intently as a young child. I became a hobbyist when I installed a battery powered hi-fi on my bicycle, so I could listen to music while doing my paper route. That was the late 1970’s. Then I got a job after school at Rich’s Car Tunes installing car stereo systems. Did you ever compete? If so, in what organization and What / When was your first completion? No, I assisted competitors with their cars but never competed on my own. What CD's are in your CD players right now? Beach Boys, Train, Herbie Hancock, Cheap Trick, The Who, Foo Fighters, Crowded House, World Party, Jellyfish If you were on a island with one Artist's music, who would that artist be? Igor Stravinski, Jellyfish What is your favorite genre of music? Melodic, harmonic, thoughtful pop, vinyl LP’s What is the ONE car you wish you could listen to? My 1989 Acura Legend Coupe (Car Stereo Review, Jan/Feb 1996) or Rich Inferrera’s 1988 Legend Coupe... What is one of the best live music shows you have seen? Why? I saw Jukebox The Ghost recently and they can play and sing like a banchee. Great young band... Posted Jun 18 2008, 10:45 PM by BenVollmer with no comments Filed under: Judges, Micah Sheveloff

• DARE to be different: On the Inside

  It has been fairly common for as long as I can remember to remove the back seats from some small coupes to get more room to install Audio gear. I have lost track of the number of Mustangs, etc. that they backseats are sitting in the garage somewhere. In part two of the DTS Dare car, we take a peek at the inside of the car. As you can see in this shot, one of the more unique parts of the car is it's amp rack. While many people try to shove five amplifiers into their trunk, Daryl and his installers took the back seat of the Crown Vic and put his amplifier and signal processors where the back seat used to reside. v For signal processing, he runs not one but two Alpine F#1 Status PXI-H990's running off the Alpine F#1 Status DVI-9990 for a 6.1 multimedia setup. All of the signal then flows to five of JBL Amplifiers and a complete setup of JBL GTI 508 Speakers with 2 12" JBL GTI's supplying the low end motivation.  In addition a HK Drive + Play System provides some iPod connectivity while this car is driven to the dozens of shows a year it is seen at.     With this setup he has consistently won the DTS and Multimedia awards 4 years in a row at the USACi World Finals. If you see Daryl and the car at a show near you, make sure to ask for a demo listen. Posted Jun 17 2008, 07:56 AM by BenVollmer with 1 comment(s) Filed under: CAN, Car Audio, Daryl Trammel

• Tunes to Tune by: HDTracks

  Up until last week, I only bought music one way. On those shiny objects called CD's. I detest DRM on purchase music and don't like the bitrate of the music available via MP3's from Amazon, iTunes or Zune. So I have been stuck buying CD's and ripping the music to my home media server at a lossless bit rate. That works well at home, but when copied to an iPod, I always feel like the bottom and top end of the music is missing. (For example yesterday in my car trip, the White Stripes were lacking in the bass department in a huge way.) Last week, I was introduced to HDTracks.com, which is founded by David and Norman Chesky of the audiophile record label Chesky Records, featuring thousands of artists, including Smokey Robinson, Joe Jackson, Bob James, Buddy Guy, Nina Simone, Earl Wild, Zubin Mehta, The Kinks, Of Montreal, Yo La Tengo and Jerry Garcia, from 60 independent labels around the world. They are offering the The HDtracks Ultimate Download Experience for the month of June for FREE. After listening to these in my iPod connected to the car, there truly is a difference that is HUGE. I could actually make out the bass lines and the highs sounded just like the CD copies I used as a reference. The download includes: Our Turn to Dance - Livingston Taylor Well, I've Been to Memphis - David Johansen and the Harry Smiths Mexican Hat Dance - Earl Wild Larger Than Life - Holly Cole Rumble - Mike Garson Can't Let Go - Koko Taylor Baba Yaga - The Minnesota Orchestra/Eiji Oue Una tarde de verano - Brio Music can be downloaded in high definition uncompressed AIFF or lossless FLAC format files for playback on home audio systems, including PCs, Macs or music servers, or as 320kbps mp3 files that far exceed the quality of standard mp3 files for playback on iPods and other portables. Furthermore, in the coming months HDtracks will offer select titles in ultra-high resolution 96kHz/24-bit files that provide DVD-Audio sound quality for music enthusiasts who seek the very finest audio quality available. They have a TON of labels working with them, including some of my favorites and covering all genres of music. HDTracks does not employ DRM as the company believes that once its customers purchase music from its site, they have the right to play it wherever they wish on any device they choose. (SWEET!!!)  Which means that at $11.98 or so for a full album WITH liner notes, they will be getting my business. Posted Jun 17 2008, 07:21 AM by BenVollmer with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Car Audio, Great CD's, Chesky, HDTracks

• Car Audio Nationals Trophies for Deep South Nationals

  The trophies for Deep South Nationals came back from Art Galaxy. Sung did as normal an AWESOME job in framing the CD in two pieces of glass to give the CD's transparency. There is one trophies for first place in both the one and two seat classes. See you guys in Biloxi. Posted Jun 12 2008, 06:08 PM by BenVollmer with 3 comment(s) Filed under: Trophies, CAN

• Car Audio Nationals - June Update

  CAN @ Deep South Nationals! Only a week and a half until Deep South Nationals, which Car Audio Nationals will be giving away a $500.00 purse. Register today for this show which will be one of the coolest shows of the year to attend. You need to register and attend the USACi Portion of the show in order to qualify for winning the CAN prize monies.  Register for the event on www.deepsouthnationionals.com and if you have not registered for Car Audio Nationals, you need to do that at http://caraudionationals.com/content/Join.aspx We look forward to seeing you there!     More Judges Added We are pleased to announce that Richard Inferrera from Rich's CarTunes, one of the original CAN winner with his yellow CRX has agreed to be a Judge at this year's CAN Finals!!!  You can read his bio here. We have additional judges profiles being added on a regular basis! Check back often!   Pictures of Audio X Nationals and Tuner Evolution! We were pleased to be invited to several IASCA shows this year to judge. See some great pictures from Tuner Evolution in York, PA, sponsored by Town Sound and Audio X Nationals in Florence, AL. There were some choice SQ Competitors at each show. Check out the photo galleries to see more great pictures of these two shows! Click Here for the Tuner Evolution Recap and here for the Audio X Recap.      Competitor Profiles Added! See who is in the competition! Profiles are regularly updated, so check back often. http://caraudionationals.com/tags/Competitors/default.aspx for pictures, profiles and much more! Draft Rules Posted We would love your feedback and changes to the rules. We will be locking the rules down on August 1st! Here are the rules and the frequently asked questions. Shipping and Handling for the CAN CD The Car Audio Nationals CD's have been flying off the shelves, which has been awesome. (you can buy your copy here.) The bad news is that Shipping and Shipping Materials are killing any and all profits from the CD's. It is costing about $2.00 or so per CD plus in postage and about .50 cents for each envelope. And these things have been flying off the shelves. So effective June 21st, I am going to start having to charge for shipping. It is something I had hoped to avoid, but at three bucks a CD give or take, it is costing an arm and a leg to ship these things around the country. So effective June 1st, the cost of the CD's mailed to you will include 2.50 in shipping and handling to recoup some of the costs. I hope you understand. If you order one or more, feel free to email me for a combined shipping cost.   Check the Blog for more updates! There is a constant stream of articles and information. Feel free to check it out! http://caraudionationals.com/blogs/   Looking forward to seeing you in Biloxi on the 21st and 22nd! Posted Jun 12 2008, 07:31 AM by BenVollmer with no comments Filed under: CAN

• CarToys Tulsa 10,000 invitational!

  CarToys of Tulsa is have a Regional USACI Event on Saturday August 30th,with a $10,000 top 30 round on Sunday. This is Labor Day weekend this year, so you can bet your backside I will be driving out to Tulsa for this and it looks like I will be in excellent company. (See the Competitor list below for who is coming as of today.) The top car in each USACi SQ class will receive an automatic bid to the $10,000 dollar money round. That means you will not have to pay an entry fee to get into that round. Now that leaves 21 open spots, which are filling up fast. Those spots can be pre-registered by anyone. Right now it looks like some very familiar names are on the list. They include: Andy Jones Rick Sellers Steve Head Ben Vollmer Adam Pate Jan Bennett Roland Froboese Lou Le Matt Roberts David Seal Kirk Proffitt Wayne Watkins Ron Baker Jim Everrit George Saltzman Chad Greer The rules for the event are very straight forward. There will be pairs of judges that will each judge the 30 entries. The high and low score will be thrown out and the remaining two scores will be averaged. This will be sound only, no install. The sound rules and sheet will be based on IASCA sound rules and the Ultimate SQ sheet. The Sunday round will be sanctioned by IASCA. If you compete in this round you will be able to compete at the IASCA finals as well. (This is awesome for those competitors west of the Mississippi!) The music will be decided by the judges prior to the event. They will be picking 15 songs that will be pressed onto 30 CD's (by the judges in the highest quality available) and given to the 30 competitors on Saturday night. There will be some traditional SQ tunes as well as some real world music, and no genre will be excluded. The thought is that the best sounding system should sound good on any music, no matter the genre chosen. They have excluded Chris Pate's Honda, Rob Rice's Honda and Gary Bigg's Old Regal from competing in this event, which is probably good news for us. The panel of judges looks awesome. As of right now the judges include: James Feltenberger Nick Wingate Dale Fontenote Doug Winker Chris and Melissa Owens Mickey Brones Lee Teeples Prize money break down for the Sunday event is: 1st $4000 2nd $2500 3rd $1750 4th $1000 5th $750 If you don't win in USACi on Saturday, the entry fee is $100.00. Packets and invites were mailed out on June 1st. You can pre-register by phone or fax: Car Toys Phone: 918-254-5093 Fax: 918-250-1459 Email: christerferpate@gmail.com Posted Jun 10 2008, 04:43 PM by BenVollmer with no comments Filed under: Car Audio, CarToys

• Daryl Trammell - DTS Dare Car Exterior Shots

  There is often the debate in the Sound Quality cars should be "shown" the same way that your traditional car show cars are shown.  Daryl Trammel is one of the few competitors I know that have successfully made the jump between traditional car shows and car audio events. Jeff Smith and Daryl just sent me some pictures of his new exterior paint job. Here is a picture of the car at Spring Break Nationals this past March. Here it is at a recent MECA show in Tennessee. His new paint job was designed by DTS and painted by Tim of Creative Customs. Hot Hues provided the paint. Boyd Coddington's Espada rims are wrapped by Falken tires. It is a pretty cool paint upgrade, that I am looking forward to seeing in person. If you run into Daryl, take a peek at his "show car" a little closer.  We will be covering his interior in another blog post soon!   So I personally think that you can do both car shows and sound quality events! Posted Jun 10 2008, 01:31 PM by BenVollmer with no comments Filed under: Daryl Trammel

• Music to Tune your car with - Possibilities

  The reason any of us got into car audio is or should be easy. For the music. And when you tune your CD, it should be for your enjoyment, with the sanctioning bodies CD's secondary. (Or on another preset.) This gem was introduced to me by Ron Baker, who is a long time IASCA competitor. Track #3 on this CD is probably my favorite, although, this is one of those tuning CD's you can drop in the CD player and NEVER want to take out. Possibilities is a Herbie Hancock record featuring a TON of popular and world musiciains. From pop singers like Christina Aguilera, Sting, John  Mayer and Annie Lennox to legends such as Santana and Paul Simon to relative newcomers like Jonny Lang, and Joss Stone, as well as Angélique Kidjo and Raul Midón in a wide range of songs. Hancock put this record together in studios all over the world, with all of the musicians in the same studio all the collaborations were done face to face, not long distance. Session musicians here include everyone from Stevie Wonder (who plays the harmonica solo on the cover of his tune "I Just Called to Say I Love You"), to Santana and many many more.  My favorite tracks are Christina Aguliera's  rendition of Leon Russell's "A Song for You," and When Love Comes to Town with Johnny Lang and Joss Stone. While not a hard core jazz album, this is one that won't leave my CD player anytime soon. Thanks Ron for the recommendation.  (And as a further reccommendation, I also have the DVD and would avoid it. ) Here is a video of the song being played on the Grammy's several years ago. Posted Jun 09 2008, 10:38 AM by BenVollmer with no comments Filed under: Great CD's, Ron Baker